


somebody who cares for me (passionately)

by Metronomeblue



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Body Worship, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Violence, Drinking to Cope, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Guilt, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Infidelity, Injury Recovery, Love Confessions, Mind Games, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Near Death Experiences, Past Domestic Violence, Scars, Surgery, Ted said Charlotte Rights, because Sam, canon-compliant through You Tied Up My Heart, tagging this one is going to be... so funny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 08:15:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23348302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: Edited 4.6.2020He wanders around, bottle bigger than his head dangling from his fingers. Looking for distractions. He had said he was going to flirt with Emma, but… he can’t. It was a shitty, shallow lie meant to hurt Charlotte, and he can’t bring himself to follow through. Hidgens has some interesting shit, and some of it Ted even recognizes- centrifuges, beakers, cabinets of compounds and chemicals, an array of video screens set into a wall.Or, Ted manages to avert several disasters and Charlotte finally gets her freedom
Relationships: Charlotte/Sam (The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals), Charlotte/Ted (The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 66





	somebody who cares for me (passionately)

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be real short but I have no self-control whatsoever and also "Somebody" by Depeche Mode is a very CharTed song
> 
> EDIT: I cut all of the smut, though I left in some of the undressing- vague and tasteful- mostly for the conversation. I can live without the smut, but I can’t live without the narrative that was running through the smut.

Ted’s pissed off. More than that, really, more than anything else, he’s hurt. She just keeps choosing Sam. She keeps choosing him over her own safety, her own happiness, her own freedom. The fact that she chooses him over  _ Ted _ stings his ego, sure, but the fact is that he’s just  _ so _ bad for her. He’s hurt her before, on so many levels, and he’ll do it again, Ted knows. He can’t help her. He can’t rip her away from Sam, can’t sever the bond she feels to him. Charlotte would just go running back. Like she always does.

He remembers the first time she came to him, bleeding and bruised, long before they so much as kissed, long before he was… whatever he is to her. Whatever the fuck  _ that _ is. He remembers the first time he kissed her, and the way she gasped, leaning back, trembling, as if he was going to hurt her. He remembers the first time they fucked, the way she settled over his hips and pressed her face into his shoulder. The way she half-said Sam’s name before she stopped, like it had clotted in her throat. He remembers the way she looked at him after, the way she looked at him last night, the way she looked at him ten minutes ago. He remembers falling in love with her, but he can’t recall a particular moment, a realization, an epiphany- one day he loved her, and then one day he  _ loved _ her. He remembers that one day she stopped saying Sam’s name in bed, started gasping  _ Ted _ , or  _ Teddy _ , or kissing him instead.

Ted takes a long swig of whiskey. It burns going down, which is good, because otherwise he’d have no use for it. He’s too hollow to feel thirst right now. He feels empty and sad and fucking stupid. He just wants to savor it, wants to let that burn fester a little, wants to wallow in self-pity for a hot fucking second before they move on with the apocalypse. He wanders around, bottle bigger than his head dangling from his fingers. Looking for distractions. He had said he was going to flirt with Emma, but… he can’t. It was a shitty, shallow lie meant to hurt Charlotte, and he can’t bring himself to follow through. Hidgens has some interesting shit, and some of it Ted even recognizes- centrifuges, beakers, cabinets of compounds and chemicals, an array of video screens set into a wall. 

“Hey, Professor,” he asks, nodding at them. “What are these?” Hidgens dashes over, so energetic it’s off-putting.

“Those are my cameras! Alexa! Why aren’t the monitors on?” The man looks both confused and furious, hissing a little, growling. “That’s the most important part of having cameras! Seeing what’s on them! Put the monitors online!”

“Monitors online,” the computer chimes, and they all light up, suddenly, a prismatic view of every corner of Hidgens’ fortress. Comprehensive, beautifully mapped, with no blind spots. The exterior, the hallways, each foot of fence, the rooms- 

“Fuck,” Ted swears, bending down to drop the bottle on the floor before he starts running. “Fuck, shit, fuck fuck fuck-“

Because there, in the bottom left corner, are Charlotte and Sam. Talking. Sam, blue-brained and still tied to the chair, but just barely. Charlotte, looking confused and pleasantly surprised. Charlotte, moving the keys around in her hand like she’s going to uncuff him.

“Charlotte!” Ted yells, bolting down the hallways. He wishes now that he’d worn sneakers to work today. They’d have been so much more helpful. As it is, he slips and slides on the hard floors, prolonging his journey far more than he’d like. Behind him, he can hear a yelp, a shout-  _ NO- _ and he runs faster, as much as he can. He’s just lucky he can remember the right room, and it takes him longer than he’d like to end up outside of it. “Charlotte!!” He yells, again, desperate this time. “Charlotte, please, come on, open the door! Charlotte-!”

“Ted?” She sounds fine. She sounds fine, and Ted exhales, whole body leaning into relief. 

“Charlotte, please, let me in-“ She screams, suddenly, and there’s a choked, wet sound that sends terror down his spine. “Charlotte! Charlotte, please answer me-“

“Ted?” She gurgles, and he sobs, yanking again at the door. It’s not opening. It’s not opening, and Ted can feel his heart slamming into his ribs, desperate, desperate- 

“I’m here, Charlotte, I’m here, please let me in, he’s not safe-!” Hidgens comes up, jogging, with a fire ax, and Ted rips it from his hands without a second of doubt. One slam- Charlotte moaning, begging, pleading Sam to stop. Two cuts- the wood begins to splinter, and he can hear a growl, another wet, slick sound. Ted feels fear in a way he never has before. Three- and he can plunge his hand through the gap and unlock the door, wood scraping and slicing down his forearm. He pushes through, ignoring the blood running down his arm, and slams the axe into Sam’s head, almost cleft in two. Sam falls back, heavy and dead; Ted is rushing to Charlotte, skidding to his knees.

Ted just barely catches Charlotte- alive, but not for long. She’s crying, delirious, still begging Sam to stop- “Please,” she sobs, “Please, Sam, I’ll be better, I won’t disappoint you, please no more-“ and Ted cradles her to his chest, supporting her enough to lift, to carry her back to Hidgens’ lab. He says nothing, can’t bring himself to, but Charlotte seems to realize eventually that he isn’t Sam- she instead continues to whimper and sob, blood rushing out of her along with tears.

He can feel the blood- hot, so hot, it’s horrifying, it upsets him on a level he cannot name- flowing rapidly from her stomach, running down them both, staining his shirt, his arms, mingling with his own blood. It drips down onto his pants and his legs and his socks and shoes. Blood is trailing from her mouth, too, and he tries not to sob as he cradles her to his chest, Bill and Paul holding the doors open for them. He lays her down gently on an operating table, Hidgens already shuffling violently through a drawer. “Charlotte-“ he manages to say, and she looks up at him with wounded eyes. He knows the exact moment when she recognizes him, because the fear leaves her entirely.

“You came back,” she gasps, smiling. She’s so beautiful when she smiles. Everything about her brightens. It hurts. “You- you came back for me, Ted.” Hidgens is bustling around the room, grabbing towels and tools and yelling at Emma to get more. Bill is holding the gun, now, looking distinctly uncomfortable with it, pointing it down at Sam with a kind of low-level loathing. Hidgens had dragged him back, a long smear of blue accompanying the trail of Charlotte’s blood down the hall. Ted doesn’t care. He’s not looking away from her.

“Course I did,” he murmurs, stroking the hair from her face. “You still can’t tell how full of shit I am, huh?”

“Don’t say that about yourself.”

“I am. I said I was moving on to the barista. I said- I said I was done, I’m not done, Charlotte. I’m not done. I’m not ever gonna be done with you.” He can feel the tears leaving his eyes, can feel himself losing the battle. “So don’t leave me behind. Don’t go, okay? Hold on. Doctor- Hidgens will help you, and- and we’ll patch you up, and we’ll- we’ll spend the night at your house, Charlotte. You and me. We’ll sleep the whole night through and wake up when the sun’s already up and- and I’ll finally tell you I love you, and you can decide whether or not you think I mean it, but I will. I will.“ He’s babbling now, crying all over her, bloody hands tangled around one of hers like it’s a fucking lifeline. She’s still smiling up at him, even as he sees more blood pour from the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll believe you,” she says softly, lips bloody even as they pull into that radiant, radiant smile. “I’ll believe you, I promise-“ She coughs, and Ted squeezes her hand.

“Stay with me, then,” he pleads.

“Ted-“ Paul is trying to get his attention, but fuck him, what does he know? What does he  _ know _ about Ted? Hidgens has set up on the other side of the table across from him, and Ted relinquishes her hand, lays it down over her heart, gently, carefully. She moans a little from the shifting, tosses her head, and Ted catches it, holds her still by cupping her face in his hands as Hidgens begins to look at her wounds. Ted sobs.

“I meant it earlier, too, when I said- when I said I was gonna go out doing the thing I love the most, I meant to stop there. I- I meant to say I love you. I keep meaning to, but I just fuck up every time. I love you,” he says, pressing his forehead to hers. “I love you, Charlotte.”

“I thought you said no strings,” she teases him, a rasp of exhaustion in her voice. She’s dying. She’s really dying. Ted kisses her cheeks. Both of them, blood on his mouth. 

“I lied.” He laughs, brokenly. “I fucked that up, too.”

“I love you, Teddy,” she says, and her eyes are so far away when she looks at him. “I know I shouldn’t, but-“ it chills him down to his core, understanding now. She’d never meant Sam. She’d tried to. They’d both meant something else. “I love you,” she whispers, and one heavy, heavy hand lifts to graze his cheek. 

“I love you,” he says again, distraught. “I’m so sorry, Charlotte.”

“Ted-“ Paul is reaching for him, ready to pull him away, but he can’t. He can’t bear to let go. “Ted, you know she’s going to turn.” Hidgens snaps at him, and Paul steps back, Emma running in with an armful of bandages, antiseptic, tools. Hidgens begins replacing her intestines, stitching up the lining of her stomach, replacing everything Sam took out. Ted keeps hushing her, kissing her, murmuring _ I love you _ s into her ears.

“I’m not letting you go,” he says to her, and she smiles sadly. “I’m not letting you go, stay with me, please-“ He can feel her breathing, thick with blood, weighted with pain and struggle. He can feel the fervor from Hidgens and Emma, as they close her veins, her muscle, her skin. She’s so weak, already. 

“What’s her blood type?” Ted can’t answer, and Hidgens swears before darting off and returning with a slip of paper. He dabs some of the blood from Charlotte’s skin, mixes it in little circles, and Ted is confused, is almost angry, that he can’t help with this. He can’t help with anything. “A positive!” Hidgens cries, holding up the bloody piece of paper. “Are any of you A positive!”

Ted scours his fucking memory, can’t place his own blood type, but Paul and Emma converse in hushed whispers for a moment, pulling out their drivers’ licenses. 

“I am,” Paul says, looking a little shaken. 

“So am I,” Emma says, rolling up the already short sleeve of her blouse.

“I’m B positive,” Bill says sadly. 

“Lucky for all of you, I’m O negative,” Hidgens says, rolling his own sleeves. He points at a wall of cabinets, “Third from the left, Emma.”

Emma stands, going to the cabinet to pull out a crate, some bandages, some blood pressure cuffs. “How much blood will she need?”

“A lot,” Hidgens says grimly, teaching into the bin and pulling out a tangle of almost-transparent tubes and packets, empty. “Have either of you donated blood before?” He turns to Sam’s body and kicks it over, out of his way, into the next room.

“No,” Paul says, as Emma says, “Yes.”

“Well, tough shit, then, I guess,” Hidgens says, bending down and stubbing out his cigarette on Sam’s twitching palm. “Because you’re about to.” Hidgens gestures to Ted, and he tilts Charlotte’s head to the side- gently, so gently- so that Hidgens can inject her with a sedative. She’s looking at Ted, as she falls unconscious, and she smiles again. Ted feels his heart tug, and Hidgens looks up in time to catch it. “Don’t worry, son, she’s almost back on stable ground. This’ll keep her asleep for awhile.” He pats Ted’s shoulder, and Ted can feel more of Charlotte’s blood wear off on his shirt. 

“Please,” he asks, drained. “Please save her.”

“I’m no medical doctor, but I promise you… I’ll do my best.” He looks grim, as he says it, troubled more than Ted would expect. “Keep an eye on that  _ thing _ over there, would you? If it attacks us mid-transfusion, she may truly die. There’s nothing any of us could do for her then.” Ted nods, takes one last, long look at Charlotte. Covered in blood, drained, sad. But alive. He kisses her forehead and turns, forcing himself away. He closes the door between the rest of them and himself, Bill and Sam, then thinks better of it and opens it again. He wants to know. If something goes wrong he wants to know. Sam’s body is splayed out, just on the other side of the doorway, and Bill is looking down at him with no small amount of disgust. The gun is unloaded and loose in his hands.

“Give me that, Bill. Fuckin’ useless,” Ted mutters, snatching the gun and reloading it. “Fucking christ, shit, motherfucking-“ 

“Ted-“

“Not now,” he snaps, then pauses, breathes. “Please, Bill. Not now.”

“Are the two of you-“ Ted’s final thread of patience snaps clean through.

“We fucked! Bill!” He can feel himself breathing, can feel the sweat on his palms, can feel the ever-present guilt. “Does it make you happy to know that? We’ve been seeing each other on the side for two years now! And I love her! Is that good enough for you? To know that I  _ wish _ it had been me instead of her? To know that I could’ve stopped this whole scenario in it’s tracks if I hadn’t lost my  _ fucking _ temper earlier? Is it helpful to know that all of this is  _ my _ fault, Bill?” Bill just stares back at him, mildly aghast, mouth hanging open. “Because it is,” Ted says miserably, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “ _ I’m _ the one who fucked up.” Bill closes his mouth, frowns, reassesses.

“Ted, you’re a real jerk, but you’re not the one who ripped her guts out.” He reaches out, laying a hand on Ted’s shoulder. “You can’t- you can’t blame yourself for-“

“I gave her the keys,” Ted says softly, intently. He says it like he’s stabbing Bill in the heart with it, like it’s a weapon he can inflict pain with. “I left her there  _ alone _ .”

“Sam is the one who laid hands on her.”

“Yeah,” Ted scoffs, smiling brokenly. “He’s been doing  _ that _ for years now, and I never stopped him before, either. I should’ve known, Bill.”

“Ted, you can’t blame yourself-“

“Then who  _ should _ I blame, huh? Who do I pin this one on? The alien blue shit driving his body? The real Sam? He’s probably long gone.  _ Charlotte _ ?” His voice breaks, hopeless and miserable. “Do I blame Charlotte, Bill? No.  _ No _ . Not her. I’m the only one left.”

“I can fix that,” a rasping, grinning voice pipes up from their feet. They look down in tandem, Sam’s horrible grin shining up at them. “You wanna be one of us, Ted? You wanna be the  _ bad guy _ ?” Ted almost feels his heart stop, but instead, as if on autopilot, he aims the gun. “You wanna be like me? She likes me, Teddy. Maybe she’d like you better if you were like me.”  _ ‘Teddy’ _ . It runs through him, a jolt of fury. Charlotte only called him that when she was at home, when she felt safe and comfortable. It stings to hear it from Sam. 

“Fuck you,” Ted says quietly, gun still leveled at Sam’s face on the ground. 

“I always knew you were a rat bastard,” the thing that used to be Sam laughs. “You think I never noticed you sneaking looks at my wife? Storing them away for later in your little spank bank? It always pissed me off to see you. Always made me hit harder.”

Ted thinks of Charlotte, bleeding out in his arms, because of him. He thinks of Charlotte, staring out the window like she was starving for Sam, or maybe like she was afraid of his coming home. Charlotte, crying into his shoulder as she told him about how Sam had stopped her from dancing in college, how he’d knocked her down and pressed his foot against her leg until it snapped, Charlotte, telling him she still loved Sam even as she sank into his arms like they were home. Charlotte, afraid and hurt and still on her knees begging Sam to just look at her. Charlotte bruised and broken and still so in love with him. Charlotte suffering at Sam’s hands. Because of _Ted_.

“I’m already the bad guy,” Ted says evenly, smiling unkindly, and cocks the trigger. “Just so happens I’m still better than you.” His hand convulses, almost, rather than any conscious movement. The trigger is pulled. Bill squeaks. Ted watches Sam’s blue, disgusting brains splatter on the floor, watches the shell discharge, go clinking across the lab. There are footsteps, a gasp, a noise of disgust.

“What the fuck, Ted?” Paul asks, incredulous, from the doorway.

“I’ve wanted to do that for four and a half years,” Ted says, still shaking with adrenaline. His heart feels lighter, somehow. “I’ve wanted that for so long.”

“Jesus fucking christ, Ted,” Emma says, peeking around Paul’s shoulder. And then, begrudgingly, “Nice shot.”

“Thanks,” he says, still numb and shaking. “Is she alright?”

“Charlotte’s good. Hidgens is taking his own blood first.” Emma creeps out, gently disengages the gun from Ted’s hands. “You should- you should be there.”

“I don’t know that that’ll keep him down,” Ted says conversationally, as if they’re discussing paperwork rather than the corpse of Charlotte’s infected, abusive ex-husband. Ted still hasn’t looked up. “But I fucking hope so.”

“What did he do?” Paul asks, looking to Ted and back. “What- What did he say to you?”

“It’s not about anything he did to me,” Ted says, in that same eerie, even tone. “It’s about what he’s done to Charlotte.”

“You love her, don’t you?” Emma says as much as asks, with a strange realization in her face. “That’s what this is about?”

Ted could explain. He could talk about the way Sam had prowled around the local high schools as a campus cop for ages, about how of all the women he cheated on Charlotte with, most of them were students at the high school or the college in town. He could talk about how Charlotte had come to see him with a black eye before, about how Sam had once snapped one of her fingers, about how he had almost broken her wrist, about how Sam had snapped her leg, because he was afraid she loved dancing more than him. About how, even putting all of that aside, Sam was a fucking worthless husband, and he made Charlotte feel like shit. How he treated her, how he used her and made her feel ashamed for it, as if it was her fault. He could tell them what Sam said, and hell, maybe Bill would. But Ted wasn’t about to air all of Charlotte’s private shames and painful memories for these people who probably barely cared.

“Sure,” he says, shrugging. “That’s what it’s about.” She doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t give a shit. He’s already heading in to see Hidgens. To see Charlotte. She’s still laid out on the table, a blanket over her and the scraps of her bloody shirt and sweater in a pile on the floor. Ted stops, two feet away. Hidgens is seated in a chair beside her, connected by a now-red tube and monitoring his own blood pressure.

“Ah, Theodore. She’s been asking for you.” Ted’s heart rises up in his throat. 

“Thought you said she was out.”

“She is. She’s been talking in her sleep. Asking for you. Well, calling for you.” He nods at her, just as Charlotte’s body jerks and a whimper breaks free of her mouth. Ted feels like a grade-A asshole. He drags a chair over from the side of the room, settling down opposite Hidgens. 

“Is she going to be alright?” Ted asks. Hidgens looks up at her, up towards her face, and thinks about it. Ted is grateful. It means there’s hope. 

“I think so,” Hidgens says, adjusting the speed of the blood transfusion, slowing the transfer. “She’s stronger than she seems. Most people would have died of the shock, or bled out before they made it to the operating table. That part is thanks to you, but the will to live… that’s all hers.” Ted hesitantly wraps her hand in his, feels the coppery stickiness of half-dried blood. It’s only then that he recalls his own wound, the long, still-bleeding cuts down his arm. His whole left side feels sticky, now, and the blood loss catches up to him. That’s fine. It’s fine now. He does feel bad about bleeding on Charlotte’s clean blanket, though.

“You got any extra bandages, doc?” Ted kisses Charlotte’s hand before releasing it. “I think I should- I should take care of this.”

“Mm!” Hidgens blinks at him. “Yeah, I think so.” The sarcasm stings, a little, but Ted is pretty far gone. Hidgens bandages his own arm, gauzes down the bandage, swigs some water. When he starts work on Ted, he makes a hissing noise. “Young man, do you have any idea how close you came to severing your major tendons? Really fucking close, that’s how close.”

“Sorry, doc. I was a little busy.” Hidgens scoffs again. Ted ends up needing a few stitches, and he sits, still watching Charlotte breathe. Making sure she doesn’t stop. She does whimper, often, making small sobbing noises and muttering for  _ Ted, Teddy, Ted, please _ , and it washes over him in a fine tide of pain. “I’m here,” he murmurs, more than once. “It’s alright, Charlotte.” He doesn’t know if she can hear. He hopes she can.

He falls asleep there, misses Paul and Emma giving blood, and when he wakes up the rest of them are scattered across the floor. Hidgens is curled up on the other operating table, Paul and Emma holding hands and resting on each other’s shoulders just beneath it. Bill is next to them, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. Charlotte is still asleep. Ted sits, for a long while, listening to their breathing- the slight rasp of Charlotte’s lungs, the whistle of Bill’s breath, the way Paul makes small, uncomfortable sounds every few minutes. Hidgens is dead silent. It’s fucking creepy.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Ted confesses to Charlotte. He knows she can’t hear him, but it doesn’t matter, because nobody else can either. “I spent all this time trying not to be in love with you. And now I am. And you said you loved me. And I shot your husband in the head. Things are getting… pretty serious around here. Maybe, uh, maybe we can... get out. Go on a date. A real date. No Sam, no “no strings”, just you and me.” Ted looks down at her face, softened with sleep, and smiles. “I think I’d like that,” he admits. “Being able to love you in the open.”

She doesn’t answer, and Ted doesn’t expect her to. She’s tranquilized to the fucking gills, of course. But it felt good to say it. Feels good to know it.

Charlotte does wake up, hours later, when everyone is getting their shit together and working out what works and what doesn’t, checking phone lines, WiFi, everything. Hidgens is ranting about Sam, about the hive mind. 

“They could help us! We could achieve world peace!” The rest of them stare at him, mystified.

“World peace?” Ted scoffs, pointing at Charlotte, who they haven’t noticed awaken. “No offense, Professor, but does this look like world fucking peace to you? Charlotte was being nice. She let him go. And he ripped her apart. They don’t want world peace.”

“But-“

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Professor,” Ted shakes his head, smiling bitterly. “Maybe their idea of peace is different.”

“He wasn’t Sam anymore,” Charlotte says softly, and as one they all turn to look at her. She blushes, looking down. “It would be a world made up of empty shells. Of course it would be peaceful. It would also be horrifying and inhuman.” Hidgens meets her gaze with no small amount of shame. Charlotte nods. “They don’t want peace, Professor. They want conformity.”

Hidgens looks down at the blue and red stains under his feet. He chooses to live. He chooses not to give in.

It’s been two days since then, all of them holed up in Hidgens’ fortress. Charlotte is better, but weak. Very weak. They’ve been getting antibiotics into her, keeping her wound clean and her bandages changed. Well, Ted has.  _ Ted _ has been getting antibiotics into her and cleaning her wounds and changing her bandages. He’s hardly left her side since she woke up. He reads Hidgens’ shitty boring science books and sits next to her cot, and though she protests from time to time, she mostly sleeps, recovering.

“Where is Sam?” She asks him on the third day, and he pauses in his reading to kiss her temple.

“Don’t worry, Lottie.” He sighs. “We can talk about it later.”

“Ted.” Her voice is firm, unforgiving.

“He- I shot him.” Ted’s voice gains an edge, gets higher. Preemptively defending himself. “He almost killed you, Charlotte. He would have kept trying. I wasn’t going to just let him live.”

“Oh,” she says softly. She doesn’t move, for a long few moments, and neither does Ted. He waits, breathing in the scent of whatever shampoo Hidgens has stocked in the showers. He waits for her to cry or push him away or be angry. She doesn’t say anything.

“Charlotte?” His voice is whisper-soft, so afraid. Not of her, but of her hatred. There’s a part of Ted that doesn’t know what he’ll do if she hates him. How he’ll live with himself. Well, he thinks, with not a small stab of dark humor, he’d find a way. It would be awful, but he’d find a way. He always does. 

“Did Sam die because of me? Was it- was it my fault?” 

“No. No, he died when the hive mind got to him, Charlotte. And then he died because he was trying to kill you. And then he died because he wouldn’t stop talking about trying to kill you. And then he died so that Hidgens could figure out what the fuck he was.” Charlotte doesn’t look reassured, really, but she looks less upset. Ted kisses her cheek. “You don’t have anything to be guilty for, okay?”

“Ted-“

“You don’t. It was us. Me and Hidgens. We killed him.”

She looks at him, and Ted is certain, Ted is insistent and forgiving, and she deflates a little. “Okay,” she says. “Alright, Ted.”

They get out of Hatchetfield, eventually. A General John McNamara knocks on the front gate and escorts them off the island, which is then summarily blown to fucking smithereens. They’re all very numb. It’s so much. Too much. Bill goes to Clivesdale, to be with Alice and her mother. Hidgens stays on at PEIP as a consultant. Paul and Emma take McNamara’s offer to go into witness protection. 

Charlotte hasn’t made up her mind. Ted has. Wherever she goes, he’s going. From here on out. As a friend, as a lover, as an acquaintance, it doesn’t matter. He’s not leaving her alone again. She clings to him, too, even now. They’re all they have left. They talk, often, and suggest plans periodically. They sleep in the same bed every night and spend most of the day together. They rarely touch when they’re awake. Everything feels suspended, uncertain, undone. By the end of the year, Ted and Charlotte have agreed to move to Wharton, two towns over from Hatchetfield. 

It’s been a month and a half since the apocalypse. It’s been a long fucking year. Ted manages to get into contact with McNamara, who hooks him up to Bill’s new number and Paul and Emma’s, which, who the fuck would’ve thought Paul would co-own a pot farm? Not Ted. It’s fucking weird. Even though it was mostly Emma’s idea, the fact that Paul is going along with it? Strange.

Ted’s not sure what he’s going to do. Charlotte uses most of her savings in combination with the money PEIP has given them to buy the animal shelter in town, refurbish it, buy actual food for the animals and pay the electricity bills properly. For the first time in what seems like decades, it actually runs. She’s having the time of her life, it seems, and she comes back to their shared apartment chattering happily about all the new arrivals, the strays and the misfits and the unloved. Ted feels at peace, sometimes, listening to her talk. 

He feels at home.

He lies awake sometimes, just staring at the ceiling and listening to her breathe. Thinking about the wedding ring she still hasn’t taken off. Thinking about how soft she feels, how close she is, how he feels like an insecure, uncertain teenager again. They spent two and a half years having sex, and now he’s afraid? Really? Because of what? Because he killed her husband? Because he said he loved her? Because he sleeps beside her every night knowing she trusts him and losing that would destroy him? Fucking loser. Ted wants to slam his own head in a door.

It doesn’t matter. 

It just burns between them, the want, the knowledge of what they had, what they could have. It rests there for months, smoldering. Until one night it’s pouring, and thunder cracks through the air like a knife, and Ted finds himself reminded of the last time he and Charlotte slept together. The last night before the world changed. He remembers the stupid fucking argument they had, how easily he’d been stirred up. 

He remembers the taste of Charlotte’s cherry-oil lipstick rubbing off on his mouth, remembers the way she’d felt under him, the way her hair had glowed under the blue light of the storm. He remembers how warm she was in his arms, how soft, how lovely it was to feel her curled up around him when he woke up. 

He looks up, and she’s standing transfixed in the doorway, staring past him at the windows.

“Feels the same,” he offers, and Charlotte nods, coming closer, wrapping light arms around his waist. She leans her head on his shoulder and sighs. “You alright?”

“Fine,” she shrugs. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Us. How we used to be.” She looks at him then, smiling a little. “We could be that again.”

“Oh,” he replies, still blinking. “We could, I- I wasn’t sure-“

“Wasn’t sure about what?” She's still smiling. Softly, encouragingly. So beautiful it breaks his heart. 

“I wasn’t sure that you’d want to,” Ted admits, smiling back, just a little. “After- after everything. I like what we've been doing,” he can’t look her in the eye when he says it. “I like that you- that you trust me. I didn’t want to fuck it up.”

“I love you, Ted,” she says softly, stroking her thumbs over his side. “I trust you. Please,” she smiles into his shoulder.

“As you wish,” he says eventually, hoarsely. He’s smiling. They both are. It’s a nice change, from before. When Ted was so wrapped up in being second best and Charlotte was buried under obligation and hopelessness. They’re different now. Stronger. Ted turns in her grasp and kisses her, and it’s hungry, all teeth and tongue and want, and Charlotte gives as good as she gets. Unrelenting. Fierce. Wanting. Her hands rise up to tangle in his hair as his begin to work at pulling up her sweater, and they part so he can tug it over her head. She dives back in immediately, biting at Ted’s bottom lip and tugging at his hair in a way that sparks heat in his stomach, pulling like a fishhook deep in his gut. He backs up to a chair, settles down into it. Charlotte slips into his lap easily, perching atop his hips like she owns them. She laughs, and where it might’ve stung before, he knows her better now. Knows it’s teasing, rather than mocking. 

“Beautiful,” he manages to say between kisses, thumbs tracing delicately up the long, thick scar on her stomach. It’s what some people would call ugly, mottled and twisted, poorly stitched and not spectacularly well-healed. Ted doesn’t give a shit. She’s alive. She’s alive and she’s Charlotte, and she’s pressing her lips into his like she’s never wanted anything or anyone more. He loves that fucking scar. It’s redemption, in a way. It’s proof that he didn’t fuck things up unsalvageably. It’s proof that Charlotte’s stronger than anyone thought. She reaches down, one finger tracing one of the silvery slices up his arm. She doesn’t look away from his face, and he feels rather too seen, in that moment. He feels as if she knows too much of him.

“Beautiful,” she agrees, kissing him on the temple.

“Fuck it,” he gasps, as she begins undoing the buttons of his shirt. “Charlotte, kitten, look at me-“ she does, sort of, hair in her eyes and a gleam of hunger clouding them. “Charlotte,” he says again, because he can. “What do you want?” Her eyes flutter open, brilliant and blue, and she leans forward, touching her forehead to his, brushing her nose past his, lips just barely kissing past his. 

“I want you, Ted,” she says, and her hands brush up to cup his face. “I want  _ you _ .”

“You have me,” and it’s too true, wrenched from his throat. It’s always been true. “All of me.” She kisses him. It’s delicate, deep. He can taste salt, faintly blood, the honey-sugar of her lip balm. He loves her. He loves her, he loves her, he loves her. He presses up against her as she presses down, and it’s a fine agony, the ache and burn of restraint under her gentle hands.

“I’m yours,” she whispers, a bare breath away from his mouth, lips brushing. It wrenches a sob from him, months of agony rushing up between them, and he can’t say anything. It’s more than he deserves. More than he dreamed. He shifts forward, splits away from the kiss to bury her face in his shoulder. He does it again, and reaches up to curls his fingers into her back.

“I love you,” he chokes out, face buried in the brilliant red of her hair. “I love you, Charlotte.”

“I love you, Teddy,” she says, pressing a long, sweet kiss to his shoulder, fingers brushing over his shoulder blades. “Please, Ted-“ He shifts, reaching up and helping her undo his shirt, four hands fumbling together. Every button undone is another quick, featherlight kiss she presses to his panting mouth. They reach the bottom together, and together they divest Ted of his stupid useless shirt that he no longer needs. They’re both tired of waiting, tired of obstacles, tired of being apart. Ted pauses in the midst of the irritating task of undressing to run his fingers down Charlotte’s leg, to press gently at the knot of poorly healed bone there. The imprint of Sam’s brute strength embedded in her forever, a mark of valor. “Beautiful,” he whispers again, and Charlotte half-growls before she leans in and kisses him. 

She’s naked, thank god, and Ted can feel the radiant heat of her skin, the soft planes of her body under his greedy, hungry hands. He can feel the press of her to all of his body, and he wants more. He wants to meet her there, inch-for-inch, touch-for-touch. 

“Love you,” she says, like it won’t instantly demolish him to hear, and Ted’s breath is forced out of him like she punched him in the stomach. Ted goes pink, from his cheeks to his ears to his chest, and she smiles, leaning forward to kiss him on the tip of his nose. 

“Love you,” he says in return. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s not fair.”

He never wants to let her go. 

When it’s done, when they’re done, he kisses the scar on her stomach once more, looking up at her from under his eyelashes. “Good?” He asks, voice rough and quiet. She nods, the shyness returning to her pink, flushed cheeks even as she smiles. “Good.” She kisses his cheek again, and stands, moving away. The wet cold of the air on their skin is a shock, but not an unpleasant one. Charlotte looks back, looks back at Ted, and he feels something prick at his chest. She smiles sheepishly at him before scurrying to the bathroom for a washcloth and her robe.

He’s used to this. It still feels familiar, still feels domestic and good and soft in his chest. He stands, too, legs shaky with barely-receded pleasure and unasked for happiness. He follows her to the bathroom, trying not to think of the mess, and when Charlotte passes him a damp washcloth, he murmurs his thanks. 

Pulling on his pants and underwear takes all of a moment, rebuckling his belt and plucking the rest of their clothes from the floor a few minutes more. Charlotte emerges with her hair fixed, her robe tied around her, a strange look on her face. “You don’t have to do that, you know,” she tells him softly. “You can- we’re not sneaking around anymore. You can stay, Ted. You can just- stay with me.” He looks at her, heart tender and painful. She smiles.

He drops their clothes and strides over to kiss her, deeply, fully, unashamed. He’s waited for this for so long, he thinks, and of course he misses it when it finally happens. Because he’s a fucking idiot. She’s laughing when he pulls back, surprised and joyful and beautiful.

“I love you,” she says, hands resting on his chest. “I love you, Ted.”

“I love you, too, Charlotte.”

They sleep the whole night through in each other’s arms, and when he wakes up in the morning he waits a long moment, just looking at her. Her nose, her closed eyes, her soft smile, the lingering flush on her cheeks, the messy red curls of her hair. Her shoulders, her neck, her graceful arms. Her gentle hands, so clever, so quick- and then Ted’s heart stops, softens, melts.

She isn’t wearing her wedding ring. 

He presses his face into the pillow and tries not to cry like the fucking sap he is. She wakes up to him weeping quietly into their pillows, and when he tells her why she laughs at him. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> anyway stan CharTed


End file.
